brooklyntheory: Pull Up Your Pants No One Wants To See Your Underwear, Harlem, NYC It’s true: No One wants to see your underwear. Of course, these signs were meant to be a little, er, cheeky, but in some towns politicians actually made it against the law to let your pants sag too low. The town of Delcambre, in Louisiana, threatened offenders with six months of jail time. Here in New York, politicians like Eric Adams took a more forgiving route, running billboards proclaiming “Stop the Sag!”  Another politician, Malcolm Smith, spent $2200 in campaign funds on anti-sag ads on the sides of buses.  “I said my pants are up, my image is fine. I said you can be cool as well. This is the new cool, just raising your pants,” said Smith, at a press conference I attended in 2010. Ironically, Smith was just arrested last week — for allegedly trying to rig the New York City mayoral race. So he may not be the best role model after all.
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brooklyntheory:

Pull Up Your Pants No One Wants To See Your Underwear, Harlem, NYC

It’s true: No One wants to see your underwear. Of course, these signs were meant to be a little, er, cheeky, but in some towns politicians actually made it against the law to let your pants sag too low. The town of Delcambre, in Louisiana, threatened offenders with six months of jail time.

Here in New York, politicians like Eric Adams took a more forgiving route, running billboards proclaiming “Stop the Sag!” 

Another politician, Malcolm Smith, spent $2200 in campaign funds on anti-sag ads on the sides of buses. 

“I said my pants are up, my image is fine. I said you can be cool as well. This is the new cool, just raising your pants,” said Smith, at a press conference I attended in 2010.

Ironically, Smith was just arrested last week — for allegedly trying to rig the New York City mayoral race. So he may not be the best role model after all.

“Fashion Week’s Models are Getting Whiter” That was the headline the other day at Jezebel, which came up with the graph above after some exhaustive research. What’s up with New York Fashion Week? In reporting on the issue myself, I realized that this isn’t just about a bunch of skinny women on runways. It’s about the very perception of wealth. In short, the faces that we see in ads for luxury products — makeup, handbags, sunglasses — are almost invariably white. Black and Hispanic ladies: good luck. Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model who’s studied the issue, says high fashion is looking for girls who project youth, unattainability and a sort of sexual purity. Over the centuries, those qualities have come to be reinforced with whiteness in the West. “Throughout colonial history, non-white women have often been marked as sexually deviant, hypersexual, sexually available,” said Mears. “Not just women, but also men.” For black models, that means being repeatedly told they should get nose jobs, or that their rear ends are too big. To be fair, some industry insiders take this seriously. But others, not so much. One designer who’s show I attended at Fashion Week was Nicole Miller. About a quarter of her models were non-white, and she had this to say. “I had 5 diversified girls, plus a redhead,” said Miller. “Which is the most diversity. Because the lowest percentage of the population is redheads. So you have to include them in the diversified group.” There you have it: redheads as women of color.
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“Fashion Week’s Models are Getting Whiter”

That was the headline the other day at Jezebel, which came up with the graph above after some exhaustive research.

What’s up with New York Fashion Week?

In reporting on the issue myself, I realized that this isn’t just about a bunch of skinny women on runways. It’s about the very perception of wealth. In short, the faces that we see in ads for luxury products — makeup, handbags, sunglasses — are almost invariably white. Black and Hispanic ladies: good luck.

Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model who’s studied the issue, says high fashion is looking for girls who project youth, unattainability and a sort of sexual purity. Over the centuries, those qualities have come to be reinforced with whiteness in the West.

“Throughout colonial history, non-white women have often been marked as sexually deviant, hypersexual, sexually available,” said Mears. “Not just women, but also men.”

For black models, that means being repeatedly told they should get nose jobs, or that their rear ends are too big.

To be fair, some industry insiders take this seriously. But others, not so much. One designer who’s show I attended at Fashion Week was Nicole Miller. About a quarter of her models were non-white, and she had this to say.

“I had 5 diversified girls, plus a redhead,” said Miller. “Which is the most diversity. Because the lowest percentage of the population is redheads. So you have to include them in the diversified group.”

There you have it: redheads as women of color.

Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines? The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness). Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private. “A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director “But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout “Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist “We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor “Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director
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Why aren’t there more minority models in the pages of fashion magazines?

The answers are often disturbing, and speak to a form of racial bigotry found in the fashion centers of New York and London — as well as a deep-rooted aesthetic that equates prestige and elitism with stereotypical whiteness (and thin-ness).

Here are a few highly-revealing quotes from fashion industry employees, from an analysis of the industry by Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model. Her article is called “Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling,” and was published in 2009. Mears kept the identities of her sources private.

“A lot of black girls have got very wide noses… The rest of her face is flat, therefore, in a flat image, your nose, it broadens in a photograph. It’s already wide, it looks humongous in the photograph. I think that’s, there’s an element of that, a lot of very beautiful black girls are moved out by their noses, some of them.” —H, London Agency Director

“But it’s also really hard to scout a good black girl. Because they have to have the right nose and the right bottom. Most black girls have wide noses and big bottoms so if you can find that right body and that right face, but it’s hard.” —A, NYC Agency Scout

“Okay let’s say Prada. You don’t have a huge amount of black people buying Prada. They can’t afford it. Okay so that’s economics there. So why put a black face? They put a white face, because those are the ones that buy the clothes.” —L, NYC Stylist

“We don’t like using the same model too often, but it’s harder to find ethnic girls. And…well, I don’t want to sound racist, but— well for Asians, it’s hard to find tall girls that will fit the clothes because most of them are very petit. For black girls, I guess—black girls have a harder edge kind of look, like if I’m shooting something really edgy, I’ll use a black girl, it always just depends on the clothes.” —A, NYC Magazine Editor

“Me personally, in my opinion, there really is no good, good, black girl around. The really good, good black girl around are still the same, and are still the one that everybody wants… It’s very difficult to find one. The agency don’t deliver enough choice to make happy the client [sic].” —O, NYC Casting Director

His Sunday Finest: Alfred Lester, an evangelist from Buffalo. I met him and his associates on Gun Hill Road, in the Bronx, where he’s been conducting revival meetings. Told him how much I loved those shoes and asked to take a picture — he generously obliged.
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His Sunday Finest: Alfred Lester, an evangelist from Buffalo. I met him and his associates on Gun Hill Road, in the Bronx, where he’s been conducting revival meetings. Told him how much I loved those shoes and asked to take a picture — he generously obliged.
Zoom Info
His Sunday Finest: Alfred Lester, an evangelist from Buffalo. I met him and his associates on Gun Hill Road, in the Bronx, where he’s been conducting revival meetings. Told him how much I loved those shoes and asked to take a picture — he generously obliged.
Zoom Info

His Sunday Finest: Alfred Lester, an evangelist from Buffalo.

I met him and his associates on Gun Hill Road, in the Bronx, where he’s been conducting revival meetings. Told him how much I loved those shoes and asked to take a picture — he generously obliged.

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